The response to Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes has been mixed. There was a collective intake of excited breath when the Direct opened with Three Houses iconography, only for a deflated sigh to ring out when Fire Emblem Warriors appeared on the screen. That means the game will not be a true sequel, but instead a musou spin-off. Then again, that's what Persona 5 Strikers is, and it managed to supersede the storytelling of the base game, as well as managing to provide just as much closure as a traditional sequel could have hoped for.
Of course, Strikers is something of an exception to the rule. Musou games ask you to worry about slashing down hordes of enemies in front of you rather than thinking too hard about the narrative. Even the original Fire Emblem Warriors follows this pattern. But hopefully Three Hopes can learn from Strikers and can carry the fantastic narratives of Three Houses into the musou world.
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The signs so far are encouraging. We're shown passages where you play Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude, suggesting you will either hop between houses and advance the story of each until they land on a collision course, or you select one house and play their story, just as in the base game. The first approach gives you more control over the narrative you want to explore in a more active, fluid sense, while the latter essentially lets you enjoy three playthroughs Rashomon-style. We see Dimitri clash with Edelgard at one point, but since you can play as both, it's unclear what that means for the wider story.
Then there's Byleth. In the base game, you play as Byleth and choose your house early on, but can mix the house up by recruiting, then after a time skip, can either remain
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